Damn. I remember when Googling your date was something only MIT students did. Tempus frangit. (I leave to you, Gentle Reader, the obvious punch line about the likelihood of MIT students finding dates in the first place.) Incidentally, does anyone else feel rewarded when they recognize that twosuccessive Neil Gaiman blog-post titles are, ultimately, riffs on Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671)?

But Peri Lyons’s own MySpace page sez, “The new song, “I Google You”, was written by NY Times bestselling author (“American Gods””Good Omens””Stardust”et al) and devil-may-care man-about-town (and hyphen-collector, apparently) Neil Gaiman, who is a genius, or at least looks very genius-y and all in that leather jacket of his.”

Meanwhile, the remarkable Peri Lyons (for whom I actually wrote the song) (not because I was Googling her late at night, but because she asked me last December to write a song for her one-woman show) will be doing the aforementioned show in New York (The Metropolitan Room: 34 West 22nd St Betw. 5th & 6th Ave. – New York, NY 10010) later this month — details at The Metropolitan Room Website, here.

(You probably don’t remember signing my copy of Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading at MIT in October 2001. It was the only book I had on me that evening, and Peter David autographed it with the notation, “I only signed this because Neil did.”)

I Google you
late at night when I don’t know what to do
I find photos
you’ve forgotten
you were in
put up by your friends

I Google you
when the day is done and everything is through
I read your journal
that you kept
that month in France
I’ve watched you dance

And I’m pleased your name is practically unique
it’s only you and
a would-be PhD in Chesapeake
who writes papers on
the structure of the sun
I’ve read each one

I know that I
should let you fade
but there’s that box
and there’s your name
somehow it never makes the pain
grow less or fade or disappear
I think that I should save my soul and
I should crawl back in my hole
But it’s too easy just to fold
and type your name again
I fear
I google you
Whenever I’m alone and feeling blue
And each scrap of information
That I gather
says you’ve got somebody new
And it really shouldn’t matter
ought to blow up my computer
but instead….
I google you

I had it all typed up, actually, from a scholarly comparison of videos, although for some reason I heard “scrap of information” as “dram of information.” All that time spent learning to write Elizabethan tragedy has ruined me.

A friend of mine — and not one of the friends who delights in torment by misinformation — insists that I met Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione at a party, but it must have been a fantastic party, because I can’t remember a damn thing.

(A friend from the old times is visiting from Colorado and showing off pictures of his new digs. Original shag carpet from the 1970s. And his research project: “And this is my reactor — focus down ten gigawatts of solar power and you can convert biomass into any carbon compound you want.” He flips to the next picture on his strange, combination phone-camera device, and the next picture happens to be a sleeping kitten. “And this,” I intone, “is the secret ingredient for biomass conversion. . .”)

I nominate this as the greatest thread in the history of interwebbery.

Anyway, thanks for the link, Blake! I met Amanda briefly when she was at ART for The Onion Cellar, which was several different kinds of stupendous. I wish they’d do that piece again, but I’m guessing it won’t happen.

Okay, children: the beyond-words-to-express-how-cool-he-is-Neil Gaiman (frankly? his photos do NOT do him justice) wrote this song and I glommed onto it and constructed a show around it. My rendition (not as great as Amanda’s, but not bad for a white girl)is at http://www.myspace.com/perilyons Go to metropolitanroom.com, search “peri Lyons” for info, and for heaven’s sake tell everyone you’ve ever met, up to and including your third grade homeroom teacher, to come.
Neil! Do please come. I will send a palanquin.
ALSO?Everyone needs to buy Jennifer’s books, “Black Bodies And Quantum Cats” and “Physics of the Buffyverse” RIght NOW!!!
They’re unbelievably great.
love
Peri

Those lyrics and Amanda Palmer are each, independently, mind-blowingly cool. With both involved, and a science fiction legend showing up to comment, my hot-swap failover mind was also blown and now I have to recover from binlogs. Sweet.